by Jay Posey
A giant dropsuit lumbered up beside him, almost comical in its bulk. Like a child’s inflated drawing of a man.
“Don’t sweat it, sir,” Mike said, over comms. “It’ll be the most relaxing twenty minute freefall of your life.”
“It’s not the fall I’m worried about,” Lincoln answered.
Mike took a step closer to the edge and leaned over for effect, getting a better view of the planet below.
“Oh, don’t worry, Cap’n,” Mike said. “This one’s gonna be real hard to miss.”
“We’re missing it right now,” Thumper said. She was standing behind them, well away from the edge of the platform. “We’re already falling towards Mars. The only reason we aren’t getting any closer is because we’re missing it.”
Lincoln sighed, closed his eyes.
“OK,” he said. “Now I’m worried about the fall.”
He reopened his eyes, checked the time-to-jump on his internal display. Three minutes, fourteen seconds. Calling it a jump was a little misleading. There wasn’t much jumping involved.
Whether a dropsuit was technically powered armor or a single-occupant vehicle was still a point of contention in certain military circles. Mostly because the classification determined who was responsible for maintaining them and, thus, where the budget for them went. The ones Lincoln and his team were using had been borrowed from the Marines, who, as far as he knew, still considered them armor. Which meant that the dropsuit was like a suit for his suit.
That was, in fact, exactly what it was. Lincoln, wearing his recon suit, had loaded into the much larger dropsuit, climbing in through the rear. It felt something like wearing a high-tech snow suit, over many layers of clothes. It had arms and legs for his to slip into, though the arms ended in thumb-and-fingerless wedges, like some sort of artistic stylization of hands. Apparently there wasn’t much need for manual dexterity when you were busy plummeting through an atmosphere. A snow suit, complete with mittens.
Above the shoulders, however, Lincoln felt more like he was sticking his head up into a bubble cockpit or a turret rather than a secondary helmet. He’d left the display on its default settings, which gave a wide-arc view, with two hundred degrees from side-to-side. The upper back of the suit had a large frame across the shoulders that housed the retro and stabilizing rockets, as well as the supply pod in its launcher.
The team had already completed the thirty minute process of walking through the pre-jump checklist, verifying their own suits and each other’s. Like all checklist procedures, some of the items had seemed trivial and tedious at the time. Now, Lincoln was glad to be able to remind himself that they’d literally checked every little detail, to keep his mind from convincing him he’d forgotten some tiny but crucial thing.
At two minutes to launch, the team assumed their jump formation, an echelon right, with Lincoln in the center. Sahil took first position ahead and to Lincoln’s left; Mike the last, behind and to his right. Wright and Thumper filled in the second and fourth positions. With a minimum three-meter gap between each, the team was spread across the curving exterior of the ship such that, from Lincoln’s point of view, it almost seemed like Sahil was in danger of sliding right off the edge. It was a silly thought, considering what they were about to do. But the unease was instinctual, and Lincoln mitigated it by refusing to look in that direction. There was plenty else he could focus on, if he so chose. Mostly he just kept his eyes on that countdown. He wasn’t usually this nervous. About anything.
Sixty seconds.
“This is gonna be fun,” Mike said. “I feel good about this.”
Thumper and Wright both chuckled. Even Lincoln smiled at the words. It was something he himself frequently said just before the start of an operation, particularly when he was feeling the opposite. He’d been too preoccupied to think about it. Mike was either poking fun at him, or covering for him. Both, most likely.
Sahil launched first. Since Lincoln had been studiously not looking at Sahil, all he saw was a flare and a streak of motion as Sahil’s dropsuit rockets fired and shot him off the vessel. Of course, in reality Sahil wasn’t flying away from the vessel, the vessel was flying away from Sahil; he wasn’t speeding off, he was slowing down. Aggressively.
Five seconds later, Wright launched in the same fashion. Which meant Lincoln had five seconds left until he was up.
Four.
For some odd reason, at three seconds to launch, Lincoln found himself concerned that these dropsuits had been “borrowed” from the Marines. He had no idea how they would ever get them back.
And then his thrusters fired.
It was like falling in the wrong direction. Or being a rock fired from a slingshot. Now Lincoln regretted what he had done to all those rocks as a kid and asked for their forgiveness as he hurtled off the ship and out into space, with Mars waiting eagerly below to smash him to pieces. In about twenty minutes.
Lincoln had done plenty of conventional skydiving and other high-altitude activities in his day, but this was a whole different ball game.
According to the dropsuit, the launch and deceleration protocol was proceeding smoothly, and all systems were green. From Lincoln’s perspective, there wasn’t anything smooth about any of it, though he did feel like he too might be green. It hadn’t been like this on Luna. He hoped he didn’t throw up. The recon suit had mechanisms for dealing with various such predicaments to keep its occupant from asphyxiating, but he didn’t want to have to run the initial stage of the op with that taste in his mouth.
Indicators on the left side of his display tracked his companions, all of whom had good launches. They were strung out across the Martian exosphere, dropsuits autopiloting them towards one another as the initial launch phase drew to a close, and EDL protocols prepared to kick off. According to official military terminology, an orbital jump went through three distinct phases: Entry, Descent, and Landing. EDL.
Or, as everyone who’d ever qualified for Orbital Jump School knew it, Extreme Death Likely.
From Lincoln’s perspective, it appeared that Sahil, up front, was slowing to allow the others to catch up. In reality, of course, it was the opposite. Mike, at the back of the echelon, was decelerating harder than the rest of them. The group closed in, reforming their line while maintaining the all-important thirty meter safety gap. Visually, it seemed like a lot of space to keep between them, but Lincoln knew he was moving about ten times that distance every second. He didn’t know his exact velocity. He’d turned that part of his display off because he just didn’t want to know. For a moment, he even considered shutting the entire display off, so he wouldn’t have to stare at the planet’s surface’s inexorable approach. But then he decided against it, only because he figured being afraid was better than being afraid and bored.
Once they passed the two hundred kilometer mark they officially began the Entry phase as they reached some imaginary line that the eggheads back home had no doubt calculated to be the technical edge of the Martian atmosphere. Not that there was any obvious indication, apart from the message on his display. There was no neat border, no welcome sign, not even a detectable shiver or shudder. It all just felt like falling. And it was going to feel that way for a while.
“Wish I’d brought something to read,” Mike said, a few minutes after launch.
“Usually I like to nap,” Thumper answered cheerfully. “But I’m just so glad to finally get some time away from Amira, I decided to stay awake for this one.”
“Keep the channel clear,” Wright barked. And then added, “And I’m a great roommate.” As usual, she said it deadpan, but Lincoln had learned to hear the curl of her words that suggested a smile even when her face lacked the expression.
The team’s relative horizontal velocity stabilized in synchronization, and their rockets winked out. In true freefall, now. Lincoln shifted into the traditional skydiving position, legs bent at the knees, arms out to the sides and bent ninety degrees at the elbow. He tried to relax.
Despite all the fal
ling going on, EDL was mostly E by protocol standards. Descent didn’t really begin until they’d used as much of the atmosphere to slow themselves as they could. Throughout that Entry phase, the dropsuits gradually took on their telltale orange glow from the friction and heat buildup. Lincoln couldn’t see what was going on with his own suit, but ahead of him Sahil and Wright looked like embers floating down from the heavens.
At fifty kilometers from the surface, the team transitioned into a second formation in preparation for the Descent phase. The echelon’s ends rotated and wrapped inward as if Lincoln were a hinge, until they were in a loose ring maybe twenty meters in diameter, with everyone’s heads facing towards the center.
At twenty kilometers, a pop vibrated Lincoln’s suit as the supply pod separated and launched itself away, headed towards its calculated drop point. Its chute would open after Lincoln’s, guaranteeing that the heavy cargo would touch down first so as to not crush the operator it was meant to supply. The landing protocol was supposed to keep it within fifteen meters of his landing site, but Lincoln knew enough about jumps to suspect he was going to be walking a lot farther than that to retrieve his gear.
Crossing the twenty kilometer threshold made Lincoln’s nerves kick up for a moment; the surface seemed so close now. He had to remind himself just how far twenty klicks actually was. Relative to their starting point, sure, they were almost right on top of Mars, but when he thought about what it’d be like to have to patrol that distance, he felt better. He even started to enjoy the view, looking at the tendrils of ice stretching long fingers out into the Martian soil, like a child sinking hands into the wet sand of a red beach. His body had almost adjusted to the constant feeling of falling; if he ignored the fact that he was plummeting, he found the peace and quiet of the surface almost soothing. Off in the distance, he could make out the snaking line of the vast Chasma Boreale canyon in the ice cap, its red-lined cliffs apparent even at altitude. It struck him then how fortunate he really was, to be among so few humans who ever had the chance to see such things with their own eyes. He couldn’t help but wonder about August all the way back up there, and whether or not he’d finally gotten his view of the ice cap.
A few seconds later, something went catastrophically wrong.
A pop and a zip, and Lincoln tumbled violently backward. He let out an involuntary cry, scanned frantically for any sign or warning of what had happened to his suit. To his great embarrassment, he realized his chute had deployed, officially marking the beginning of the Descent phase.
“Lincoln,” Wright said over comms, “you OK?”
“I’m good,” Lincoln answered. “I just uh… just dozed off on the way down.”
The Descent phase was a lot like regular atmospheric jumps. The thin atmosphere required a special chute design, much larger than what he’d been used to back home, but the general idea was the same. The wedge-like heat shield covers over his hands ejected, revealing fat-fingered gloves that made it look like his hands had swollen up with some sort of allergic reaction.
Lincoln scanned around him, saw that each of his teammates had good openings on their chutes. The timing hadn’t been perfect; Sahil was a few meters higher up than most of them, and Thumper a little lower. That wouldn’t pose any problems, as long as everyone kept their lanes clear. Even in the thin Martian atmosphere, the slowing from the parachute was dramatic. Lincoln had gotten used to watching his altitude decrease so quickly, he’d sort of forgotten just how long those last few kilometers were going to take. During the Descent phase, he expanded the view projected on the dropsuit’s helmet and adjusted it in order to get a better view of the terrain. They were low enough now that he could start getting oriented. In addition to the marker for the landing zone, he brought up indicators for both their planned base camp and the target facility. The sites were off his right shoulder, and, from so high up, looked almost shockingly close together. Lincoln knew, however, he wouldn’t be thinking that when they were making the walk.
After a few minutes of graceful descent, a chirp informed him that the dropsuit was about to detach from the parachute. He’d survived the Extreme and Death phases. But most people did. It was the Likely part you had to worry about.
A few seconds later, the chute clacked loose and Lincoln was briefly in freefall. Within three seconds, a whoosh became a roar as the dropsuit’s rockets fired off once more, providing the final-stage thrust that would prevent Lincoln from creating a new, shallow, and unimpressive crater on Mars. The ground rushed towards him like a lonely hound greeting his master, and then seemed to change its mind, slowing its approach to one of casual indifference, until at last Lincoln felt like a dandelion seed, floating on a gentle breeze. He chuckled at the thought. It was a ridiculous comparison, considering he’d seen from the outside what it looked like when a thousand-pound suit touched down. There was nothing dandelion-like about it.
The rockets shut off an instant before his feet hit the ground, and he made contact with about the same force as if he’d jumped off a short ladder, instead of from a ship two hundred and fifty kilometers above. Once he was safely down, Lincoln thanked God for the ground, the Marines for the suit, and all the eggheads back home who’d devoted their lives to math and physics so that he could do the fun stuff.
The rest of the team had good landings as well, though they were a little more spread out than originally intended. There were, of course, no gravity generators this far out from civilization. Getting gathered up took some effort, as they all had to get accustomed to the lower gravity.
“Everybody good?” Lincoln asked.
“Yep,” Thumper answered.
“All good,” Mike said.
“Good,” said Wright.
Sahil gave a neutral wave of his hand, like he didn’t want to talk about it.
“Sahil?” Lincoln said.
“Good, sir,” he said, but his voice sounded off.
“You’re not hurt are you?”
“No,” Sahil replied. He didn’t sound happy.
“You have a hard landing?”
He waved his hand again, more aggressively this time.
“Sahil, if you’re busted up,” Lincoln said, “I need to know right now, this isn’t the kind of place you can just tough it out–”
“Puked in my suit, all right?” he snapped, “Can we go now?”
“Ugh,” Thumper said. “That’s literally the worst.”
“One time,” Mike said with a chuckle, “when I was at Bragg–”
“Not now, Mikey,” Wright interrupted. “We need to get moving.”
“Roger that,” Lincoln said.
The first order of business, once his teammates were all accounted for, was to recover their supply pods. And that was just the beginning. Once they were loaded back up, they still had an eight kilometer trek from the landing zone to the crater they’d picked out for their temporary base camp. After three days in a box, Lincoln had been looking forward to getting out under a sky again. But after having fallen through one for half an hour, now he was thinking it might be nice to have a roof again.
“And, just ‘cause I’m havin’ such a good day,” Sahil said. “Looks like my pod burned in and skipped on impact. How far out you want me to go lookin’?”
“Locator still working?” Lincoln asked.
“Nah, but I watched it comin’ in. I know the general direction.”
“Two hundred fifty meters,” Lincoln answered. “If we can’t see it by then, we’ll re-evaluate. But hold up, we’ll all go.”
Sahil trailed along while the others bounded out to their supply pods and got them loaded back on to the dropsuits. Lincoln understood the reasoning for the separation; every pound they could shave off the dropsuit made it easier on the landing, and between the suit and the pod, the suit was carrying the more precious cargo. If one of them had to have a hard landing, it was better for it to be the supply pod. Still, given the unwieldy design of the pod and the complication of the dropsuit’s fat hands, it was a pa
in to deal with getting the two reunited. By the time they’d recovered four of the pods and were ready to start the search for Sahil’s, Lincoln had half a mind to abandon it, just to save the effort.
They had redundant supplies for this exact scenario, and could have scraped by if only three of the five pods had survived. But they were going to be uncomfortable enough as it was, and he knew that once he’d had a chance to rest a few minutes, he’d be cursing himself for his laziness if they didn’t salvage everything they could. When everyone else was loaded up, the team set off together in a shallow wedge formation with Sahil taking the lead, headed in the direction of his errant supplies.
It took them all a few minutes to learn how to walk again. A normal stride was impossible to maintain, and the cumbersome dropsuits didn’t make things any easier. Lincoln finally settled on a sort of shuffling hop. Once he got the hang of it, though, he couldn’t help but have a little fun with it, taking the occasional bounding step. On one particular hop, he added a little twist at the peak, for effect.
“Wow, sir,” Mike said. “I didn’t realize Master Sergeant’s been giving you ballet lessons.”
“That good, huh?” Lincoln replied.
“That bad,” Thumper answered.
Wright didn’t say anything about the comment, but a few seconds later she took a bound of her own and pulled a full 360-degree twist before touching down again. Even Sahil laughed aloud. After that, it wasn’t the most professional patrol Lincoln had ever been a part of. But out here in the empty Martian wastes, after three days in a box, the team let loose a little bit and seemed to relax into the trek. Which was good, since once they recovered Sahil’s supplies, they still had several kilometers of open Martian terrain to cover before nightfall.
FIFTEEN
Elliot waited in the lobby or the foyer or entryway, or whatever the small, drafty room by the establishment’s front door was supposed to be. “Establishment” was the best word he could come up with for the place. It wasn’t a bar or a restaurant, was neither diner nor pub, but was perhaps some kind of confused mix of the four. Not his choice. Not his contact’s, either. Just the luck of the random draw, one option of many in a pool of casual spots neither of them frequented but weren’t so far out of the norm as to attract attention. The ceiling was about eight inches too low; not enough to bump his head on, but enough to make him instinctively hunch anyway. A “Please Wait To Be Seated” sign stood guard by the entrance, which is why he hadn’t chosen one of the many empty tables available to him. He’d waited long enough to at least entertain the thought that maybe someone had forgotten to remove the sign, but when he’d started to take a step beyond it, a surly man behind a counter gave him a sidelong glance that made him keep his place.